Almost 44 years since NASA launched Voyager 2, the spacecraft has gone beyond the frontiers of human exploration by visiting Uranus, Neptune and, eventually, region .
Last March, the agency was compelled to pack up its only means of reaching 12 billion miles across the heavens to the present robotic trailblazer. On Friday, Earth’s haunting silence will come to an end as NASA switches that communications channel back on, restoring humanity’s ability to mention hello to its distant explorer.
Because of the direction during which it's flying out of the system , Voyager 2 can only receive commands from Earth via one antenna within the entire world. It’s called DSS 43 and it's in Canberra, Australia. it's a part of the region Network, or DSN, which along side stations in California and Spain, is how NASA and allied space agencies stay in-tuned.
DSS 43 may be a 70-meter dish that has been operating since 1973. it had been long overdue for upgrades, especially with new robotic missions headed to Mars this year and even more preparing to launch to review other worlds within the months and years to return . So last year, the dish was transitioned and dismantled, albeit the shutdown posed considerable risk to the geriatric Voyager 2 probe.
Like everything in 2020, what would are a traditional antenna upgrade was anything but. Usually, the mission’s managers at NASA’s reaction propulsion Laboratory in California would send about 30 experts to oversee the dish’s makeover. But restrictions imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic reduced the team to four.
At the Canberra station, the crew performing on the upgrade had to be separated into three smaller teams, said Glen Nagle, outreach manager at the Canberra region Communication Complex. “So there was always a backup team just in case anybody got sick, and you'll put that team in isolation, and therefore the other team could are available and canopy for them.
” They also split the teams into morning and evening shifts to make sure social distancing.